St. George's Church in Sheffield

 

A detail of the gritstone used at St. George's church

A week after undertaking my recce in Whirlow and Ecclesall Woods for the forthcoming Sheffield U3A Geology Group November field trip, I took advantage of the continuing bright weather in November by catching a bus to Walkley, to attend the Walkley History Group Drop In, which they hold at the Walkley Carnegie Library. 

 

The approach to St. Mary's church along Howard Road

Having met various members of the group at the Sheffield Heritage Fair, I decided to find out if they had any information about the old quarries at Bole Hill, but they couldn’t help; however, they did say that one of their members, who is associated with St. Mary’s church, seemed to be interested in the idea of me giving a talk to their group and I walked up Howard Road to see if anyone was there on a Saturday morning. 

 

St. George's church

 

It wasn’t open, so I caught a bus back to Sheffield and alighted at the former St. George’s church, which is now part of Sheffield University. Earlier in the year, I had been asked by a member of the Sheffield Area Geology Trust (SAGT) if I knew what building stone had been used here – with his thoughts being that it is Chatsworth Grit, because the Vicar of Sheffield owned the Bell Hagg Quarry – at least when the 1858 edition of Hunt’s Statistics was published. 

 

The north-west corner of St. George's churchyard

 

Photos of this had already been taken for the British Listed Buildings Photo Challenge and I had only taken a few quick snaps from a distance when passing by. Looking at the very wild grey to orange colouration of the walling on St. George’s Terrace, this does appear similar to the extreme colour variation seen at the Sheffield Royal Infirmary – considered to be the Loxley Edge Rock according to SAGT. 

 

A view up the tower

 

I have seen marked grey to orange colour variation in coarse grained sandstone that I have considered to be Chatsworth Grit, mainly for the presence of significant quantities of quartz pebbles that can be of fingernail size, but I have not seen enough buildings known to be constructed in Loxley Edge Rock to choose between the two, when trying to identify them. 

 

The west door

 

Getting closer to the west door, I could see that the masonry to the lower section of the tower has a much more subtle colour variation from light grey/brown to light brown/orange, with cross-bedding and a pattern of slight blackening that looks like that the result of air abrasive cleaning.

 

A detail of the gritstone at the west end

Looking closely at the fabric, the sandstone is very coarse grained and my first thought was that this was an example of the Chatsworth Grit, which is probably from the Rivelin Valley, but no pebbles were obvious to me – although I have to say that I didn't spend that much time studying the masonry, as I had other things to do.

A view from the south-east

The church was designed by the architectural practice of Woodhead and Hurst of Doncaster and completed in 1825 and, having a quick wander anti-clockwise around the church to take a few more record photographs of its exterior, I didn’t see any see any variations in its masonry. 

 

A view from the north-east

 

This practice was also responsible for Christ Church (1830) in Stannington and for the Boy’s Charity School (1825) at No. 14 East Parade, both of which are built with very coarse grained gritstone that I have also thought is Chatsworth Grit. 

 

A gate pier on Mappin Street

I then went down to the east entrance of the churchyard on Mappin Street, where the large gate piers are made from a single large block of gritstone. These have a very wild and sudden grey to orange colour variation, as previously seen in the walling to the north-west corner of the churchyard on St. George’s Terrace. 

 

Grave slabs on the north side of the churchyard

I didn’t stop to look closely at any of the memorials in the churchyard, which are mainly simple inscribed slabs, with a few larger raised tombs and a couple of table tombs, all of which are made of a very fine grained sandstone that I presume to be Greenmoor Rock from one of the quarries around Brincliffe Edge and Hunters Bar.

 

A pattern produced by air abrasive cleaning

 

After taking another look at the results of air abrasive cleaning adjacent to the west door of the north aisle, I was interested to see several unusual memorials, which comprise a relatively thin moulded slab placed on large plinth like structure consisting of thick slabs of Greenmoor Rock.

 

Memorials at the west end of the churchyard

 

A Recce in Whirlow & Ecclesall Woods

 

The Collier's Grave

The day after my visit to Boston Park in Rotherham, to look at the blocks of Rotherham Red sandstone that been excavated during the construction of new reservoirs and retained for possible use to restore historic buildings constructed with this locally distinctive sandstone, such as St. Helen's church in Treeton, I returned to Sheffield to undertake a recce for the next Sheffield U3A Geology Group field trip. 

 

The route of the Sheffield Round Walk

 

In 2017, except from the leg through the Gleadless Valley to Meersbrook, I had completed the Sheffield Round Walk in stages and had encountered various points of interest: geology, industrial archaeology and, during a couple of later trips to Ecclesall Woods with Linda from our group to help with one of her projects - an attempt to identify the rock formation from which the boulder with rock art is derived.

The geology around Whirlow and Ecclesall Woods © BGS

 

Since the COVID-19 Pandemic, due partly to the diminishing health matters that had affected the Group leader Paul and other members who had previously organised and led our field trips, gaps had begun to appear in our itinerary and, for our November field trip, I devised a walk that started at Whirlow Quarry Garden in Whirlow and finished at Wood 1 in Ecclesall Woods - a pattern that deviated from our usual circular walk, but which encouraged everyone to use the bus instead of driving to a very popular place where there is limited parking.

 

The planned route for the November geology field trip

 

With only the precise location of the rock art being unknown to me, I asked Paul to accompany me on the recce to firm up the route that I had planned and, if required, to add further to the knowledge of the various sites that I had already acquired during my previous visits. 

 

The entrance to Whinfell Quarry Garden

 

Meeting at the entrance to Whinfell Quarry Garden, which was designed in 1912 by the horticulturist Clarence Elliott to occupy two disused flagstone quarries in the Rough Rock, we firstly had a look at the fine grained paving stones that were presumably supplied from here. These contrast strongly with the coarser grained sandstone used in the walls, which has been brought from elsewhere in Sheffield. 

 

Views of Whinfell Quarry Garden

 

On previous trips to Leeds, to look at the building stones in the city centre and spend the day exploring Roundhay Park, we had seen several examples of the very coarse grained and often pebbly Rough Rock and this provided a good opportunity to explain the considerable variation that occurs in this very extensive sandstone formation. 

 

A specimen of Rough Rock from Fenney Lane

 

Leaving by the entrance on Fenney Lane to find the path that would take us down to the path by the Limb Brook, I noticed an exposure of very poorly cemented outcrop of Rough Rock beneath the exposed roots of a tree, which is very fine grained and orange in colour – a characteristic that I had not seen before. 

 

The old quarry by the public footpath next to Limb Brook

The old quarry next to Limb Brook has very well defined alternation between fine grained flaggy sandstone and silty beds, which are deeply weathered. Certain beds are very rich in iron, like the fine sandstone described above, with spheroidal weathering developing along the joint planes. 

 

The development of spheroidal weathering

 

We quickly made our way down the side of Limb Brook to Ecclesall Woods and then went to have a look at the remains of the Ryecroft Mill and try and find the exposure of the Ran Wood Coal and associated ganister that has been recorded in the stream bank here, but we did not find any rock exposures in the stream bank.

 

The remains of Ryecroft Mill

 

Making our way past a small outcrop of sandstone on the southern boundary of Ecclesall Woods, where the sharp junction between the sandstone and underlying mudstone is probably a crevasse splay, we didn’t stop at the ochreous spring. We both knew this well from previous visits and continued past an old Q-pit up past the bird sanctuary and carried on until we reached the J.G. Graves Discovery Centre, where we had lunch. 

 

A crevasse splay and the site of a Q-pit

 

After lunch, we took a public footpath to Wood 2, where there are further Q-Pits, an old ganister quarry that is now filled with water and known as the Collier's Pond, before continuing to the Collier’s Grave – which marks the place where George Yardley died in 1786, when the cabin that he lived in beside his charcoal hearth caught fire.

  

The Collier's Pond and Collier's Grave

 

Continuing to another old ganister quarry in Wood 3, I obtained a couple of samples of greyish coloured and very dense fine grained sandstone from the waste, which contain traces of carbonised wood and are probably ganister, but they lack rootlets that are very commonly seen. 

 

Specimens of ganister

 

From here, we headed off to find the rock art, comprising a large boulder with cup and ring markings, which is considered to be probably Neolithic in date. To finish our recce, we continued to the Dobcroft Road entrance to the wood, passing one of several streams that has brought down quite large blocks of sandstone from the higher ground to the north.

Rock art in Ecclesall Woods

A Missed Opportunity in Rotherham?

 

The restored west window at Rotherham Minster

My last day out in October 2022 was spent investigating the area around Ecclesall, Bents Green and Greystones, which is underlain by the Loxley Edge Rock - a formation that I had seen at its type locality along Loxley Edge, in Hagg Stones quarry and in various historic buildings and boundary walls at Wadsley, Worrall and Oughtibridge and other suburbs in north-west Sheffield. 

 

St. Helen's church in Treeton

 

The last week of the month was spent at home, to finish off some decorating and to prepare a talk that I had been asked to give to the Friends of Rotherham Archives – Another Case for Sherlock Stones? - which describes the stone matching exercise that I had undertaken at the Grade I Listed St. Helen’s church in February the previous year. 

 

The Brampton Chapel

 

The last source of the locally distinctive Rotherham Red variety of the Mexborough Rock, in which the church is built, had been declared unavailable for the foreseeable future by the quarry owner – due to the costs of removing the overburden from existing reserves. 

 

Cavernous decay in the chancel wall

Although there have been no plans to restore extensive sections of masonry at St. Helen’s, which have been badly affected by cavernous decay, there are six other Grade I Listed churches in Rotherham and many other Listed Buildings constructed from this stone that need to be kept in a good state of repair. 

 

Cavernous decay in the chancel wall

 

A couple of days before I was due to give my talk, I was contacted by Janet Worrall of the Friends of Boston Castle and Parklands, to tell me that a decision had been finally made to retain numerous decent sized blocks of Rotherham Red sandstone, which had been excavated during the construction of new reservoirs by Yorkshire Water to the north of the old quarry face in Boston Park – 5 years after I had discussed the benefits of this with the Rotherham MBC manager of Green Spaces, before the project started. 

 

Repairs on the front elevation of the Chapel of Our Lady on the Bridge

 

Nobody from Rotherham MBC had since contacted me to discuss this further so, making the most of a sunny afternoon, I decided to go to Rotherham to see if I could get some photos of these to include in my talk and also have a quick look at the Chapel of Our Lady on the Bridge, where Permian St. Bees sandstone from Cumbria and Triassic Hollington stone from Staffordshire have been used to restore the Carboniferous Rotherham Red sandstone.

 

A detail of Hollington stone used for restoration

Taking the bus to Moorgate and walking up Boston Castle Grove, I couldn’t miss the mound of rock waste that had been excavated to accommodate the reservoirs, which was surrounded by a high fence, but I had expected to see the entrance to the building site cut off from the general public. 

 

A pile of rock waste from excavations for the reservoirs

 

To my surprise, there were no gates or anyone to stop me entering the site and I carried down to the site office and introduced myself to the site manager and explained the reason for my visit. Issuing me with a high visibility jacket and hard hat, he showed me briefly around the site and pointed out the various blocks that were being retained. 

 

Retained blocks of Rotherham Red sandstone

 

It seems that they had been offered to stone suppliers, but none of them thought that they were large enough to be worth collecting and processing but, to my eye, it seemed that although probably not large enough to fabricate dressings, they were of good enough quality to be cut down by stonemasons for use for the restoration of walling – as at St. Helen’s church.

 

Some of the retained blocks of Rotherham Red sandstone

 

While at Boston Park, I had a quick look around to take a few record photographs of its declining condition and overgrown quarry faces, which despite the efforts of Janet Worrall and her colleagues – who also have done sterling work at the nearby Moorgate Cemetery – continues to be neglected.

 

Views of Boston Park

 

After giving my talk on the Saturday, first thing on Monday morning I made contact with Rotherham MBC to get more information and then called the Diocese of Sheffield, which ironically has a photo of St. Helen's church on its home page, to inform them of this source of stone to potentially repair some of the Grade I Listed churches in Rotherham, which was duly circulated to various members of staff responsible for church buildings. 

 

Rotherham Minster

 

Much to my surprise, I got several immediate responses, with the surveyor responsible for Rotherham Minster being particularly interested. For recent restoration to the west window, she had faced this problem and, during a good telephone conversation, explained that the British Geological Survey – who she was obliged by the Diocese of Sheffield to consult - had considered Watts Cliff gritstone to be the best stone to use. 

 

The west window of Rotherham Minster

This was a surprise to me, because the recent sample that I used for my own stone matching exercise - using the naked eye and hand lens only - clearly has a very different colour and texture; however, agreeing to meet up for an informal chat after Christmas in case she ever needed another opinion, I passed on details of the staff at Rotherham MBC and Yorkshire Water who she needed to speak to, if she and her colleagues wanted to pursue the matter further.

 

A detail of the west window

 

Having done my best to notify the people responsible for the care of the fabric of St. Helen’s church and others within the Diocese of Sheffield of this resource, albeit temporary, the matter ended when I finally received a response towards the end of June 2023 - to which I replied to say that it is a great shame - especially when a great effort is being made to get a restoration job done properly.

 

 

A Walk From Trap Lane to Greystones

 

A view of St. John's church in Ranmoor

Leaving Trap Lane behind me, I headed down Whiteley Wood Road and briefly stopped to photograph the house at the entrance to Meadow Farm, which looks more like a later Victorian lodge to a large country house than a farmhouse. 

 

The farmhouse at Meadow Farm

 

At the time I didn’t look at the stonework but, from my photographs, I can see that that there are at least two phases of construction, with the original part of the house being built in thinly bedded sandstone that looks to me like Rough Rock. The newer masonry is more massive and is quite grey in colour, with many of the blocks having orange to dark rusty brown colouration – a variation that is similar to the sandstone seen at Bents Green House. 

 

The former Methodist chapel on Whiteley Wood Road

 

A little further down the hill is the former Methodist chapel (1789), erected by Mary Mitchell and Sarah Hutton, the daughters of Thomas Boulsover - the inventor of Sheffield plate, who has a memorial at the nearby Wire Mill Dam. It is built in a Coal Measures sandstone, which is buff/light brown in colour with pronounced iron staining and Liesegang rings and quite different to the sandstones that I had already seen during my walk. 

 

The former Methodist chapel on Whiteley Wood Road

 

The next stage of my walk proved to be more complicated than it should have been, having found the public footpath further down Whiteley Wood Road, but I managed to lose the path and found myself criss crossing the fields and encountering various barriers to my progress. 

 

Views when searching for the public footpath to Whiteley Woods

 

Retracing my steps back to the public footpath where it crosses Bluebell Wood Brook, I eventually got back on the right track and encountered various dry stone walls and gateposts – some without walls attached – that made me further wonder where the sandstones were sourced and how they got there, in the days when transport was by horse and cart along poor unmade roads. 

 

Yellow clay on the footpath

 

Following the path through Whiteley Woods, which is set on the siltstones and mudstones beneath the Loxley Edge Rock, in a couple of places I found yellow clay along the path, which is formed by the weathering of mudstone, and a couple of man-made exposures. 

 

A man-made exposure of weathered mudstone

 

Apart from the remains of boundary walls, the only sandstone that I could find was in the form of loose fragments that I presume are derived from the upper slopes. The samples that I collected without my Estwing hammer are fine grained, light muddy grey/brown in colour with orange iron staining in the body of the stone and on weathered surfaces. 

 

Samples of sandstone from Whiteley Woods

 

Following the path through the allotments to Highcliffe Road, I then walked down the hill to Greystones Road and continued past the site of old quarry in the Crawshaw Sandstone, which I have since discovered on Google Map still has a visible face, until I reached High Storrs Rise – where Hornby Court was built on another quarry on the Loxley Edge Rock. 

 

The 1885 Ordnance Survey map of Greystones

 

On the 1855 Ordnance Survey map, this quarry is marked on the edge of the hamlet of Greystones, which grew around the late C18 Greystones Hall and it is therefore very probable that it supplied the stone for all of the houses here and some of the surrounding area.

 

Various historic buildings on Greystones Road

 

Most of the buildings on Greystones Road have been demolished but, on the south side of the road, there is a cluster of buildings that includes Hornby House, Hornby Cottage and a terrace of houses, which clearly show the character of what I presume to be the Loxley Edge Rock. 

 

Hornby Cottage

 

The sandstone used for the walling is massive, but is face bedded where used for the quoins and lintels and is quite clearly distinguishable from both the Greenmoor Rock and what I presume to be the Rough Rock, which I had seen earlier on my walk. Although slightly dirty, the sandstone is quite grey, which might account for the name of the hamlet, with often sharp variation to orange/brown and dark rusty brown – a characteristic that I had seen around Wadsley, Worrall and Oughtibridge, where the Loxley Edge Rock is very coarse grained. 

 

The north-west elevation of Greystones Hall

The last building on my list to photograph for the British Listed Buildings Photo Challenge was the Grade II Listed Greystones Hall, where there are only very limited views of the various facades from the surrounding roads.

 

The north-east elevation of Greystones Hall

 

The principal north-east elevation is built with uniformly coloured large ashlar blocks, which is quite grey in colour but, unlike that used on the north-west elevation, I don’t think this is Loxley Edge Rock and needs further investigation; however, on this occasion, I just took a few record photographs before heading back to Ecclesall Road to finish a good walk of over 8 km. 

 

My walk from Banner Cross to Greystones